Many of us begin a new academic or fiscal year this week. In the spirit of new beginnings and renewed vows of organization, AAS has added an RSS feed to our website. Those who have visited the AAS website recently have no doubt noticed how much content has been added, events promoted, books published, etc. [...]
The Mince Meat Throwdown was a success! Unlike the chowder made from Mrs. Bliss’ cookbook, the mince pie actually held its own as a main course. The recipe could have easily worked as a dessert pie, being as sweet as it was. Even though there was beef in the pie, it certainly didn’t taste like [...]
Amateur city directory. Chicago: Warner Bros., 1876. This rare pamphlet chronicles Chicago’s amateur press community as of 1876. Its publisher was 15-year-old Frank Dudley Warner, editor of the recently established Amateur Monthly—one of a burgeoning number of amateur newspapers then being published nationwide by hobbyists on table-top presses. Included is a directory of nearly a [...]
The following conundrum for Past is Present readers comes from AAS reader Mary Fissell. I’m writing a book about Aristotle’s Masterpiece, and have just spent a couple of very productive and happy weeks working with the AAS’s collection of 50+ editions. This book, neither by Aristotle, nor a masterpiece, is one of the longest-running popular [...]
Fate of the Rebel Flag. Painted by William Bauly, lithographed by Sarony, Major & Knapp. New York: William Schaus, 1861). Due to the approaching 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, several examples from AAS’s holdings of war images and broadsides will appear in loan exhibitions and as reproductions in upcoming publications. This chromolithograph from [...]
The following post comes to us from AAS reader Peter MacInerney. Early in January 1855, a Concord-based free-lance writer, occasional surveyor, and sometime lecturer, visited the American Antiquarian Society at its then-new building. This second Antiquarian Hall had been completed little more than one year before, after the Society outgrew its original building. The visitor [...]
Walking from Boston to Washington between February 22d and March 4th 1861. Boston, 1861. This small handbill records the unusual political activism of the Providence, RI, book publisher Edward Payson Weston (1839-1929). During the 1860 presidential campaign, Weston made a wager against the odds of Lincoln winning. If Lincoln won, Weston agreed to walk from [...]
With all of the media buzz around the recent nuptials of Chelsea Clinton, I thought of another presidential wedding: the marriage of Nellie Grant to English aristocrat Algernon Sartoris in 1874. Eighteen year-old Nellie Grant was the only daughter of Ulysses S. and Julia Grant. She met Sartoris, the son of the famous singer Adelaide Kemble (sister of [...]
Schoolmarm, 1870
